That’s right, the children’s word of the year for 2015 has been official stated to be ‘#’ or hashtag for those unfamiliar with the insanely popular Twitter trend.

Oxford University Press analysis

The Oxford University Press analysis revealed that chidlren under the age of 13 are very familiar with the Twitter search term and use it for as a tool to add emphasis and comments to their online messages.

The rise internet related words such as Facebook, mobile and e-mail have went hand in hand with the exploding popularity and availability of smartphones to younger audiences in the late 2010′s.

Although the former words are slowly being surpassed in popularity by the likes of Snapchat, Instagram and emoji.

Vineeta Gupta, head of children’s dictionaries at OUP says that she was mostly surprised by the ‘maturity in which children are embracing current affairs’ with regards to the use of Twitter hashtags.

A prominent example would be the recent Ebola crisis where many young Twitter users added hashtags like #ebola or #epidemic in their Tweets regarding the worldwide crisis.

According to Gupta it’s a nice thing to see how modern children’s way of storytelling is not lost but is simply evolving and changing to match more modern lifestyles.